Half of the earth is under 30, Mithra Katalunga is 24. When he speaks of leaving college next year to go home to Sri Lanka and start a “soil revolution,” he says he will look to speak to the young there, they are, he says, more open to change. We need to think differently about the world. While Old Fartism rages around the earth, healing the earth isn’t something Mirtha and most people his age need to debate. They know it, in their hearts and souls.
When he says older people are resistant to change, this stings me a bit to hear, as I am 68 and I am open to change. I want to tell him my life really began at 61, but I doubt he can understand that. Older people remember what it is like to be young, but younger people have no idea what it is like to be old. And I know what he means. I understand that I am not the future of the earth, not really, I am the past. I have much more time behind me than ahead of me.
Mithra does not need to be politicized. He has decided not to live only for money and for things.
He is a Buddhist, not especially political. He doesn’t dwell in the land of the “left” or the “right.” The Blue Star Equiculture garden he lives in and loves and nurtures does not have a label. But when I watch the news or see stories about the political campaigns, I don’t see Mithra anywhere in these images or stories or machinations. The young, like the old, seem to be missing from the dialogue.
The young, in fact, seem invisible in our political process, yet I imagine they will be heard soon enough, and powerfully. I am counting on it. The world is depending on it. Mithra and his peers will be everywhere, they will soon be running the earth.
Mithra doesn’t need to change to support the rights of people to marry who they wish to marry. There is no hatred in his politics, no ugly slurs or insults, no bigotry, no wars, no vengeance or posturing or angry judgment. He doesn’t need to be told about the earth either, he is one of those people Pope Francis is talking about when he says we need to create an “ecological citizenship” of the earth. Mithra is there.
While we were talking, he showed me where he works out in the garden. I thought of what a telling symbol that is. He will never be on cable news, his revolution will most likely not make it to New York Times or Washington Post. But he is big news I think.
Tens of millions of Americans drive to hi-tech gyms with monthly fees and memberships, rows of expensive equipment, fancy sneakers and shirts, power drinks, stereo systems and banks of TV monitors, Iphones and earphones. This is how we stay fit. Mithra goes to the big old pine tree where Paul Moshimer, my friend and the co-director of Blue Star Equiculture, hung himself a few months ago.
He brings nothing but his own body.
Paul’s death makes the garden a more spiritual place, Mithra is at ease there. And he is aware of the time, money, gasoline, energy and electricity he is saving by doing his pull-ups by the big tree, his sit-ups on the ground, his run along the dirt trail. He doesn’t need a fancy gym, he says, the world is a gym, the garden is a gym.
This is what the Pope is talking about when he says we need to let go of our ideas of live and think differently.
Mithra does pull-ups and sit-ups in the shade of the beautiful old tree, he is healthy and fit. With each pull-up, he kisses the tree. When I think of him and those gyms, I think of the future. Mithra thinks about it very differently, he uses what he needs, we can learn much from him. His desk is a camping chair and a slab of wood, he eats the vegetables in his garden, he showers in the nearby stream, he goes into the farmhouse when he gets hungry for some bread and fruit.
His friends get angry at him because his cell phone isn’t always on. I have a phone, he tells them, I answer I when I please. I want to be an ecological citizen, Maria already is one. She only buys what she needs, she wastes nothing, she preserves everything she can. She has taught me much about doing that.
Maria and I are talking a lot about the next phase of our lives, I think big change is upon is. Mithra is one of the many things that inspire me – us- to embrace the great change coming in the world. Mithra has moved beyond hate, labels, argument. He is moving forward with his life, and if he is representative of the billions of people under 30 who are coming of age in the world, there is much to be hopeful about. The time of the hoary and angry old men on cable news every night – most of them hoary and angry old white men – is coming to an end.
I know in a sense I am one of those men, however different I seek to be. I am proud to make room for the young.
Mithra comes from another world, he represents another way of living.